THE RATIONALE OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 783 



ground contains, in addition to our sensations, the 

 world of emotions, desires, and impulses. We long 43. 



Desire for 



for a construction or interpretation or this world which interpreta- 

 tion of the 



shall give a satisfaction similar, but superior, to that ^^"«^- 

 afforded by the picture of the physical universe. At 

 such an interpretation the human mind has been, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, labouring ever since the dawn 

 of civilisation, and the result is embodied in the poetical 

 and religious view of the world and life. 



In taking the outer world which, from this point of 

 view, is a construction carried out with the help of 

 others in the early years of our childhood, as the model 

 according to which to construct an interpretation of the 

 larger — in fact of the whole — field of consciousness, we 

 follow the actual lines of development which our mind 

 has undergone in preparing us for the work of this life. 

 For it is only through and after that earlier unconscious 

 and inevitable construction that the notions of self and 

 not-self, of subject and object, of our own person as 

 differentiated from but co-ordinated with other persons, 

 have entered our mind and enormously extended our 

 original mental horizon or firmament. Looking around 

 us, beholding definite things in the outer world, and being 

 impressed, through language, with the conviction that 

 other persons have what we, rightly or wrongly, learn to 

 consider as pictures of these things within their own 

 minds, we are led to consider these outer things to be 

 the cause of the sensations which we experience ourselves, 

 and only in so far as we can correlate our inner experi- 

 ences with external things do we consider them to be 

 real and not mere fancies ; for, inter alia, we can then 



